


Think For Yourself

by fourteenlines



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen, Nebari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 16:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22252456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourteenlines/pseuds/fourteenlines
Summary: It's for the greater good.





	Think For Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Beatles Title Challenge at Farscape Friday.
> 
> Originally posted circa 2003.

"It's for the greater good," they told her, faces sweet and blank and cruel. She spat at their pearly smiles and braced herself for the pain racing along her nerves. 

She'd developed muscle spasms at odd times, when she'd be lying alone in her cell and there wasn't anyone around for metras. No one to activate the control collar, no one to give her the popular line about conformity being the price of civilization. "Look at the Peacekeepers," her mother had pleaded with her. "Look at the empire they've built. Then look at the Delvians, at what individuality brings you." 

"Happiness," she'd offered. 

"No, child. Only sorrow." 

So many of them, wandering the streets of Nebari Prime in their blissful orthodoxy, would never comprehend the things she'd seen. The thoughts which had crossed her mind. The moments of pure freedom so exquisite she thought her heart would burst. 

"We should never have sent you off-system for school," her mother had sighed, shaking her head as they took her away. "But you were such a bright girl." 

Her mother was a traditionalist. Her mother had never needed to be mind-cleansed, and that made it all the more shocking to the neighbors when she'd been carted off in the authority's gleaming white transport pod. 

"She was always such a good girl," she'd imagined them saying to one another, shaking their heads and calmly returning to their daily routine. 

She once watched a family of perfect Nebari children look on in apathetic silence as an authority officer shot their mother to death. 

There were moments in her cell when she felt she might sink through the floor, disappear out of corporeal life and exist only to haunt the minds of people like that. To goad them into rebellion, fervor, or anything other than the dull edge of rationality. 

Her jailers where anything but rational, and that was the irony. She spent many arns thinking on that paradox, that no one was watching to ensure the authority did not get out of hand. They used any means necessary to force submission on the populous, up to and including mental cleansing. "Such a tiresome process," the first so-called counselor had told her. "We hate to use it for any but the most hardened criminals. I do hope you prove yourself otherwise, my girl." 

She wondered if that method worked on anyone. Surely if someone could be convinced of the benefits of obedience by _boring_ them to death, they didn't really need to be imprisoned in the first place. 

They didn't remain tedious for long. The control collar had come soon enough, but that was only the beginning of their tortures. Nebari were imaginative by nature. It was, they assured her, for the greater good. 

If she'd had something to hold onto, it might have been different. If she had a sliver of hope that someone would set her free, she might have kept hold on her precious rebellion. But she had no one. Her mother wouldn't spare her a second thought while she was in prison, except the occasional twinge of sorrow. A woman such as her mother could not be shaken out of her complacency. 

And for the longest time, it had just been the two of them. Perhaps she shouldn't have been sent off-system for school. 

They came for her again, but this time she was ready. 

Varla greeted them calmly, her face sweet and blank and cruel. No one wanted to hear her, shouting that freedom was the best way of life. Perhaps the majority of them didn't want it. Perhaps they didn't deserve it. 

She'd been in prison too long to be concerned with anything but her own welfare. It was such a brilliant plan, really. No one looked over the shoulders of the ones in charge. It was, after all, for the greater good. 

She'd always been a bright girl. 


End file.
